Terribly Happy

Lilly: What’s my name?

Me: Lilly. Lilly Grace.

Lilly: What’s your name?

Me: Uh… Daddy.

Lilly: Daddy Grace.

THE END

It’s been a few weeks, but yesterday I was on NPR’s All Things Considered with a segment about how the World Cup is affecting Internet traffic, how to watch it online or on your phone and the debut of 3-D TV sports on ESPN.

The audio of the segment is here and you can see the blog post I wrote to go with it on the All Tech blog.

Apart from the fact that I don’t follow World Cup too much (especially now that they allow a million bees in the stadium), there was another little curveball with this segment: I was chosen as the guinea pig for an experiment.  We did my half of the segment not in the KUT studio like we usually do, but with an app called “Report-IT” on my iPhone.

The app was able to connect to their ISDN line and apparently the sound was pretty good.  The only thing I notice in hearing it back is that the room I was in sounds very echo-filled, but that’s the room’s acoustics, not the app’s fault. I could have switched to a sound-proofed room in my work building (yes, we have one), but the Wi-Fi connection I was using didn’t reach that far and when we tried it with 3G, the quality dropped considerably and there was too much lag.

The best part was talking to Michele Norris while an engineer instructed me to move the phone to different positions around my mouth. “Now hold it upside-down and away from you at a 45-degree angle, like you’re talking across the top of the surface of the phone.”

These guys know audio.  It’s incredible how well they know what works and what doesn’t.

Not sure if I’ll be back on a regular schedule on NPR, but at least for this week I got to feel a little bit like a radio pioneer. (Or “test subject” or “guinea pig.” I’m fine with any of those.)

A few months ago, I got an e-mail asking if I’d like to write some tech columns for CNN.com. After making sure it was cool with my employers, I wrote two, the first of which appeared on CNN’s Web site yesterday. It’s about my belief (which I still believe despite a bunch of nay-saying comments) that smart phones and other touch-screen Internet devices will eventually replace our remote controls.

(I wish I’d taken a screen grab of CNN’s front page yesterday; it was featured there with a little image and headline near news of the oil spill and the NBA Finals.)

So, apparently, CNN is making a big push into online tech coverage. They have a very active tech blog and are publishing a large number of freelance pieces, guest columns and other pieces on their redesigned tech section.

They did ask me for a mug shot, but I had no idea it would run so large up at the top of the story. I mean, it’s cool and all, having my gigantic face up on the Web where America can easily access it and mock, but very few dudes in the tech world can pull that off with anything approaching aplomb.

OK, only one guy can pull it off. He’s Pete Cashmore and we all have a crush on him.

Look at this guy:

Are you kidding me?

Even the background is beautiful and hip and cool! No fair.

Anyway, my second column should appear next week, I think. They haven’t asked me to write anything beyond that, so we’ll see what happens.

iPhone 4, ruiner of current iPhone you own

Even though I haven’t done NPR segments in a couple of weeks (I should be back on next Monday, but I never know from week to week exactly what’s happening), things have been super-busy at work with so much tech news, mostly in the area of new phones and wireless announcements.

Last week I did a story about a partnership my newspaper has started with local social media/location company Gowalla.  Stories where you’re writing about your own company are always tricky to navigate and this one was no exception.  As that was going on, I was testing out the new Sprint EVO 4G phone that hit stores on Friday.

I wrote a review for this week’s Tech Monday, but we ran it early on my Digital Savant blog Friday and the response from fans of the Android OS was… spirited. Make no mistake, iPhone vs. Everybody Else is the new Macs vs. PCs. People are getting really passionate and territorial about their smart phones.

I called it “Impressions” instead of a review because I don’t think you can really hit all the details with just a week or two of time with a phone with so many features and apps, but I did my best to give it a fair shake.  As I was working on that, news broke that AT&T is changing its wireless pricing for smart phones and that created a big flap on the blog, too. ( got an NPR blog entry out of that, too.

That rolled right into my write-up and live chat on the new iPhone 4 Monday, which turned out to be an exhausting time. I love this stuff and I enjoy writing about it, but after a while my brain just gets tired of all the details and just wants to shut down. (Which it did. Last night.)

So that’s been my last week. Lots of writing, lots of trying to keep up with tech announcements.  When I’m not working, I’m trying to take it as easy as possible. We got season passes for our local water park Schlitterbahn (“Shitter Bomb,” Glark calls it) and have been taking Lilly. It’s great, relaxing fun and except for when I take my phone in the water to snap photos or video of Lilly on a tube, I’m trying not to be so inundated with tech in my off time. It’s hard, but I’m trying.

The only other major thing of note that I haven’t mentioned anywhere else yet (not even on Twitter) because I didn’t want to jinx it: my first tech column for CNN.com should be up on their site tomorrow. I’ll post it here as soon as it’s available.

We’ve been big Christopher Nolan fans since Memento and damned if we weren’t blown away by Dark Knight, so it’s not hard to get worked up over his new summer movie, Inception. It features Leonardo DiCaprio and more stars than I care to name and looks pretty fantastic.

Our Trailers Without Pity for Inception concludes that it will probably be amazing if it doesn’t get too far up its own dream colon.  I mean, it has to be. Have you seen the other movies that are out this summer? It’s like navigating a yard full of poop where a St. Bernard lives.

You can view it here on the TWOP site or below if the embedded video works for you.

The video just went up and we’re already working on the next one, for Scott Pilgrim vs. The World.

“My lockbox is well-stocked with condoms and booze.”

“I helped invent the Internet, so it seems strange that I don’t have your e-mail address.”

“You’re so pretty I bet I can get you on Current TV.”

“You make my ice caps melt.”

“Was your daddy a carbon-emitting smokestack? Because you’re taking my breath away.”

Add your own in the comments!